55. mystical musing: Seeking opportunities to fail brilliantly!
(inspired by the Virgo Sun of 2017)
The Sun is now in Virgo (as of 3:20pm on Tuesday, August 22). Get with the transformation program, she says. Show up with integrity, she says. Organize your shit, she says. See through the lies, she says.
Oh, but watch out! She can be such a perfectionist, disconnected from the messy, get down and dirty earthiness of life!
In that regard, recognize things as they are, and behold the natural everyday magic all around and within you. See what is before you. Here. Now. The past and future bleeding together into this and every thought, experience, action. We are living with Gaia, all together, each with a role to play. We’ll get it “right” and “succeed” sometimes, but that is beside the point, and can even cause us to falter along the journey.
Whatever “it” is, do it. Simply. Fully. Generously. Completely. Be it laundry, dishes, work, art, exercise, meditation…Make the most of this life. Everything is sacred, and every act a ritual.
With this approach, there is no such thing as “success” or “failure” - these are mere labels applied by a critical mind. I don’t know how your mind functions, but i recently discovered through a breakdown that anticipation of success shuts me down just as much as fear of failure (and actually, maybe more so).
See, i was sinking into an old pattern of self-pity, feeling immobilized and suffocated in a quagmire of bilious slime. In the visualization, i felt/saw myself with only my head sticking up out of the slime - still able to see the blue skies of hope - but with core, arms and legs totally useless. Then i sunk deeper, and the slime consumed me completely. I dissolved into it, becoming it, oozing slowly across the landscape, consuming every living and beautiful thing in my path. Until…until, i heard the wind whispering through the leaves of an apple tree. I rose into a human’ish form and reached for the apple. With one bite, the juice dribbled down my chin, and i was revivified.
Avalon, by Stephanie Law
It took a total surrender into the ugly and messy - into the life-negating, life-denying, life-nullifying - feeling and becoming all the guilting, shaming, blaming darkness. Only then did a touch of sweet inspiration lift me up where i could hear, see, taste, feel the juicy sacred apple-promise of life without success, without failure, just pure being, creating, sharing.
In that, i realized how much i’ve held myself back by a need for success and/or a fear of failure. No more, said my soul. Turn it around and upside down, she said. It’s not about success, she said. It’s not about doing it all right all the time, she said.
So, feeling this, knowing this, embodying this, if i were to put out an ad in Great Spirit's Classified Column, it would be: Seeking opportunities to fail brilliantly (and perhaps miserably, too)!
Have fun and play, my friends, for there is nothing serious about this life, and it is all very serious at the same time.
In service of d’Light and d’Mess!
Jennifer
* The Guided Meditation on Patreon this week is a journey into and through and passed the body-, mind-, heart-, soul-, spirit-sucking muck. Available soon!
